Read This: Zahra's Paradise

Last month, documentary filmmaker Amir, writing under his first name only, debuted Zahra's Paradise, an online comic about Iran after the 2009 election. The series revolves around a fictional Iranian family searching for their son, Mehdi, who went missing after attending a protest. As the family soon learns, Mehdi, like many members of the Green Movement, is being held in one of Iran's infamous prisons. A new page of this dark and unabashedly honest tale is posted here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in seven languages, including Farsi and Arabic. GQ recently spoke with Amir to learn more about his series, how the internet is changing the nature of protest in Iran, and his thoughts on Ahmadinejad.

GQ: How did you come up with the idea to do Zahra's Paradise?
Amir: I first thought I'd do a farce about Ahmadinejad—it was before the election. So I was thinking about doing something called "Ahmadinejad's Secret Diary." It was much more funny. But then the election happened and my mood changed.

GQ: How so?
Amir: You know, you wait for the great men to speak in defense of the rights of the Iranian people, but everyone's focus has been on the nuclear issue. This is my way of saying that there's another side to this that's just as important. It's great to be concerned about what the Iranian government might do ten, twenty years from now, but look at what it's doing to the Iranian people now.

GQ: What was it like for you to see all of the images pouring in from Iran after election?
Amir: It was almost like a moment of recognition that there is another Iran we can all relate to and that we all belong to, and that Iran is alive and full of energy.

GQ: Did you feel compelled to do a comic about that other Iran?
Amir: I did. When you get news over things like CNN, you're only getting this sliver of the day, or a fragment of something. So I felt that people won't really be able to weave these fragments into a larger story. And it was that larger, deeper story that I was interested in. We saw, for example, Neda's image on the street, but that's just a fraction of her. It doesn't really show her in detail—her family's life and the politics around it. I wanted to bring those things out into the open.

GQ: Were you surprised by how similarly Iran's current protest movement is to the one back in 1979?
Amir: I felt the same way then that I do now: You have this fear, "Oh my God, what kind of disaster lies ahead for these kids, how many more lives must be lost, how much more must this country suffer before it reaches an equilibrium?" Except if you look at the crowds who were in the streets during the latest protests, it's a very hip, cool crowd compared to the ones in 1979. There's an art and beauty and youth to it. They're very intelligent about what they're doing and how they're doing it.

GQ: The nature of the crowd has changed, too. It's expansive in a way it couldn't have been thirty years ago because of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Amir: There are a whole band of techies around the world who made servers available so voices in Iran could be heard. It's a global movement. Iranians are everywhere.

GQ: Is that why you decided to put Paradise online?
Amir: Yes, without question. We draw a cartoon and it's in eight languages. You spend years and years trying to say something, and the doors are often shut. And now suddenly, I can. It's happening because people want it to happen.

GQ: Your website doesn't reveal your full name and there's no way for readers to get in touch with you. Why choose to be anonymous?
Amir: I hate the fact that I'm doing it anonymously, because I'm not afraid of the Islamic Republic. But the reality is that my parents are there, and so I felt I needed to give them one layer of protection, at least for now.

GQ: I wanted to ask you about these mini-essays you post in the comments section of the site, like the one you posted recently called "The Hellish Prison Quiz." What are you hoping to get across through your comments?
Amir: I want to engage people and raise their understanding of what's going on in Iran. So with the quiz, I wanted to remind people that Ahmadinejad was the most ferocious critic of Guantánamo. But look at his own prisons. Why is the Muslim world so silent about Iran's prisons? Why is the world? Hypocrisy has a long tradition in the Islamic world, unfortunately.

GQ: Paradise seems to explore that hypocrisy.
Amir: It does. That government is such a waste of time and energy. We should be doing much more interesting things than dealing with the Islamic Republic.